Sen. Mary Landrieu crosses party lines to defend oil, gas interests

WASHINGTON -- When the Senate voted Thursday to kill a measure stripping oil industry tax breaks, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, now an independent candidate for president, tweeted: "#FollowTheMoney >> Senators who voted to protect oil subsidies received $23.5 million from oil companies. http://bit.ly/HiN6Xg" linking to a report by the liberal group Think Progress. The report, headlined, "Senators Who Voted to Protect Oil Tax Breaks Received $23,582,500 From Big Oil," and a similar one released Friday morning by MapLight, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that reveals money's influence on politics, both focused special attention on Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., one of the leading recipients of oil and gas industry support, and one of few Democrats to vote to protect the industry.

The Associated PressSen. Mary Landrieu is among the Senate's top recipients of oil and gas money.

Both reports relied on data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The MapLight report noted that Landrieu was one of only four Democrats -- the others were Mark Begich of Alaska, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia -- who were among the 47 senators to vote against moving ahead with a vote on ending $24 billion in tax breaks for the industry, effectively killing the measure. She was also one of only four senators -- along with Begich, Nelson and Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe -- to vote earlier in the week against even entering into the debate on oil taxes.

According to MapLight, "all four senator who voted against beginning debate on S 2204 count the oil & gas industry among their top 10 contributing interests. Oil & gas groups are Jim Inhofe's largest ($472,000), Mary Landrieu's third largest ($424,700), Mark Begich's fourth largest ($145,405), and Ben Nelson's 10th largest ($293,550) contributors."

Think Progress came up with slightly different figures based on the same data -- listing Landrieu as having received $492,030 in oil and gas money since 2006, and $891,574 over the course of her career. Her Republican colleague, Sen. David Vitter, R-La. -- who joined her in voting "no" Thursday, but voted to allow debate to proceed earlier in the week -- received $612,850 since 2006 and $1,018,685 over the course of his career.

President Barack Obama had drawn the political line in the sand on the vote, telling senators Thursday, they can "stand with big oil companies, or they can stand with the American people."

"It's not as if these companies can't stand on their own," said the president.